Hypertext transfer protocol (http)

Hypertext Transfer Protocol ( HTTP ) 工業科技教育學系李宗達

HTTP is a request-response standard typical of client-server computing. In HTTP, web browsers or spiders typically act as clients, while an application running on the computer hosting the web site acts as a server. The client, which submits HTTP requests, is also referred to as the user agent . The responding server, which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images, may be called the origin server . In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies , gateways , and tunnels .

HTTP is not constrained in principle to using TCP/IP , although this is its most popular implementation platform. Indeed HTTP can be "implemented on top of any other protocol on the Internet, or on other networks." HTTP only presumes a reliable transport; any protocol that provides such guarantees can be used. [2] Resources to be accessed by HTTP are identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)—or, more specifically, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)—using the http or https URI schemes .

The standards development of HTTP has been coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), culminating in the publication of a series of Requests for Comments (RFCs), most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.

Support for pre-standard HTTP/1.1 based on the then developing RFC 2068 was rapidly adopted by the major browser developers in early 1996. By March 1996, pre-standard HTTP/1.1 was supported in Netscape 2.0, Netscape Navigator Gold 2.01, Mosaic 2.7, Lynx 2.5, and in Internet Explorer 3.0. End user adoption of the new browsers was rapid. In March 1996, one web hosting company reported that over 40% of browsers in use on the Internet were HTTP 1.1 compliant. That same web hosting company reported that by June 1996, 65% of all browsers accessing their servers were HTTP/1.1 compliant. [3] The HTTP/1.1 standard as defined in RFC 2068 was officially released in January 1997. Improvements and updates to the HTTP/1.1 standard were released under RFC 2616 in June 1999.

An HTTP session is a sequence of network request-response transactions. An HTTP client initiates a request. It establishes a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a particular port on a host (typically port 80; see List of TCP and UDP port numbers ). An HTTP server listening on that port waits for a client's request message. Upon receiving the request, the server sends back a status line, such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK", and a message of its own, the body of which is perhaps the requested resource, an error message, or some other information.

HTTP defines eight methods (sometimes referred to as "verbs") indicating the desired action to be performed on the identified resource . What this resource represents, whether pre-existing data or data that is generated dynamically, depends on the implementation of the server. Often, the resource corresponds to a file or the output of an executable residing on the server.

HTTP is a stateless protocol. The advantage of a stateless protocol is that hosts do not need to retain information about users between requests. For example, when a host needs to customize the content of a website for a user, the web application must be written to track the user's progress from page to page. A common method for solving this problem involves sending and receiving cookies . Other methods include server side sessions, hidden variables (when the current page is a form ), and URL encoded parameters (such as /index.php?session_id=some_unique_session_code).

There are currently two methods of establishing a secure HTTP connection: the https URI scheme and the HTTP 1.1 Upgrade header, introduced by RFC 2817 . Browser support for the Upgrade header is, however, nearly non-existent, so HTTPS is still the dominant method of establishing a secure HTTP connection. Secure HTTP is notated by the prefix https:// instead of http:// on web URIs.

Hypertext transfer protocol (http)

by johnny19910916 on May 26, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 2

Statistics

Hypertext transfer protocol (http) Webinar Transcript